


calmly at the crossroads (no desire to run)

by breezered



Series: sweet dreams (are made of this) [2]
Category: The Last of Us (Video Games)
Genre: 80's AU epilogue, Established Relationship, F/F, That's right, aiming for heartwarming and good and pure, arcade au epilogue, one person asked for it and i did it, what does that say about me?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 23:34:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29358804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/breezered/pseuds/breezered
Summary: Ten years later, Ellie and Dina are living their life together, braving the new decade of the 90's. They're happy, healthy, thirty and flirty - all grown up?title from ABBA's 'When All is Said and Done'sequepilogue to - state of confusion (i'm in)
Relationships: Dina/Ellie (The Last of Us)
Series: sweet dreams (are made of this) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2156601
Comments: 31
Kudos: 69





	calmly at the crossroads (no desire to run)

_~1993~_

Ellie sighs and rubs a hand down her face. The numbers on the page stare up at her, mocking her. Her thumb clicks the pen over and over, speeding up until it slips off the little nub.

“Everything okay over there?”

Behind her, Dina is lying on the couch with a book held up over her face. She’s got it lowered enough for their eyes to lock as Ellie looks over her shoulder.

“Can you come check this for me?” Ellie asks. Dina nods and dog-ears the page she’s on, pushing her glasses up her nose.

That’s new in the past year, and Ellie takes every opportunity to tease Dina about it. The frames are thick, big circles taking up half of her face. She only wears them for reading and driving, even though Ellie’s caught her squinting at the TV and her reflection in a mirror across the room.

Dina leans down over the table beside her, and Ellie tilts her head to rest on her shoulder. Her skin is warm on Ellie’s ear, the scent of her lavender soap drifting pleasantly into Ellie’s nostrils.

“Arcade books?” Dina asks, and Ellie nods. An arm snakes around her shoulders as Dina reads the ledger. She hums quietly as she traces a finger down the rows of numbers.

“Please tell me I fucked up somewhere,” Ellie asks, turning to press her lips against the freckles of Dina’s bicep.

“Wish I could,” Dina sighs, “but looks like you did it all right.”

“Fuck.”

Dina squeezes her arm where it’s wrapped around Ellie and pulls her in tight. A lingering kiss is pressed to the top of Ellie’s head. “I’m sorry, babe.”

“This sucks,” Ellie leans forward and drops her head on the table. “I was so cocky when Marlene threatened closure last year.”

“Hey,” Dina combs her fingers through Ellie’s hair until she lifts her head up. She’s smiling at her, soft and gentle, and Ellie waits for the reassurance. “Look, people are just…not into arcade games anymore, I guess.”

“Well, they’re all idiots!” Ellie says. Dina laughs and slides her hands down to twist her fingers with Ellie’s. She pulls until Ellie is standing before her, stepping in and brushing their lips together.

“I know,” Dina mumbles. “Come on, there’s nothing you can do about this until tomorrow. And my back is killing me from bending over that stupid car of yours all morning.”

Ellie rolls her eyes, but she lets Dina lead her through their small rental house to their bedroom. It’s modest, like the rest of the house, a double bed jammed into one corner to make room for an old chest of drawers. Dina pulls off her shirt and flops down face first into the mattress.

Turning the lamp on that sits on the bedside table, Ellie climbs onto the bed next to her and snaps her bra strap.

“Ow!” Dina lifts her head and frowns at her. Ellie grins and leans over, lying down and squirming until her head is awkwardly positioned under Dina’s. Dina sighs, annoyed, but drops a kiss to Ellie’s forehead anyways.

“Will you still love me when I’m unemployed and a failed businesswoman?” Ellie asks with a pout. Dina leaves a series of light kisses on that pout, growing longer and fuller until her tongue is sliding along the roof of Ellie’s mouth and drawing whimpers from her throat.

“I’ll love you even when we’re eating cans of tuna for every meal,” Dina teases, “because you haven’t made any money for us in, like, ten years.”

“Dick,” Ellie mutters, wrapping her arms around Dina’s neck and pulling her down into a hug. The familiar weight of Dina’s body on hers is a comfort, somehow pressing all the stress out of her system until the worries seem to slip from her mind.

Dina’s lips trace the line of Ellie’s throat. “Don’t worry. I’m a very successful mid-level employee at a mid-level engineering firm, I’ll provide for you.” Her teeth nip at Ellie’s pulse.

“That’s why I’m with you,” Ellie teases, “the financial security.” Dina chuckles and leans back a bit.

“Seriously, Ellie,” she says, smoothing hair back from Ellie’s forehead, “don’t worry about that. Jobs come and go all the time. Something great could be just around the corner.” Ellie smiles, grateful for Dina’s optimism. “Now, I’m tired and you’re clearly not going to be any help with the knots in my back, so I’m going to take a blisteringly hot shower and pass out.”

Elli watches her stand and shuck her clothes. Green eyes trace the familiar shape of Dina’s body, and she just smirks when Dina grabs her towel from the back of the door and calls her a voyeur.

Later, when they’re both tucked under the comforter and wrapped around each other, Ellie finds that she can’t bring herself to worry about what tomorrow will bring. With Dina’s even breaths warming the side of her neck, the smell of her shampoo and toothpaste mingling in the air, she knows that no matter what, she’s got everything she needs right here in her arms.

***

The machines in the arcade flicker to life, dozens of different start-up tunes mixing together in that same old, familiar din.

Ellie looks are at the place she’s called home for so much of her life. Even when she wasn’t _literally_ living here, it always felt like a second home. Somewhere she could come and escape from the outside world, leave all those stupid teenage worries behind. And then adult worries, or arguments, or stubbing her toe on the table first thing in the morning, effectively trying to ruin her day before it began.

Now, it’s the source of her worries.

She sits across the table from Marlene. The older woman has streaks of grey in her hair now, wrinkles around her eyes and a shakiness to her hands that hadn’t been there even two years ago.

“I’m not sure what we can do,” Ellie says as she watches Marlene read. “Maybe we could start doing movie rentals? Or, I was thinking, if we could get a liquor license for even just a few nights a week, I think we could really improve profits. Pull people around my age back in with the promise of drunk nostalgia, y’know?”

Marlene sighs and tucks her reading glasses into her pocket. “Ellie, you’ve done a great job here. Really, I mean that.”

“But?”

“But,” Marlene nods, “arcades just aren’t the business they used to be. Everyone’s got a Nintendo in their living room now, they don’t want to come out and spend money when they could just stay home.”

“I know,” Ellie says, “but that’s why I think we just need to incentivise. I mean, people can just buy beer and take it home, but they still go out to bars, right?”

“Yes,” and Ellie can see the rejection in Marlene’s eyes before she even finishes speaking, “but that’s not the same. I’m sorry, Ellie. At this point in my life, I’m not looking to try and re-invent my business. I’m just looking to fill up my savings so I can retire.”

“One month,” Ellie says, “just, give me a month. If I can’t find a viable solution for you in a month, you can shut this place down and I’ll stop bugging you.”

Marlene regards her with those sharp eyes, eyebrows tugged together as she considers Ellie’s words.

“One month.”

***

“Okay, how about this,” Ellie says, holding up her hands like she’s framing a marquee, “arcade, snacks, and porn.”

Dina snorts into her casserole, hiding her laughter behind a fake coughing fit.

“Pass,” Joel says, rolling his eyes. He pours more water into Dina’s glass.

“It was a long shot,” Ellie shrugs.

They’re gathered around the table in Joel’s dining room for their weekly Sunday dinner. Joel had cooked up some sort of casserole, that he and Dina had gabbed over the recipe for like a couple of the WASP ladies from the church group, but Ellie had paid no mind to it.

After a week of brainstorming, she had yet to come up with a business plan that she thought Marlene would buy into. It was starting to gnaw at her, keeping her up until the wee hours and painting dark circles under her eyes. Dina had been endlessly patient with her, listening to her rambling and ranting. Well, at least she hadn’t gotten up from where she was working, or reading, or watching TV. She would nod and hum at the appropriate times, and that was good enough for Ellie.

“You know,” Joel says, and Ellie hums, ready for a long speech about ‘back in my day’, “when I first started working in contracting, the company I had worked for shut down.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Ellie waves her hand, “and you came out on the other side a new and happier man.”

“No,” Joel cuts her off with a sharp glance, “no, I floundered for about three years before I figured out what I wanted to do.”

Under the table, Ellie feels Dina’s foot bump hers. Dina sends her a look across the table like ‘respect your father, you degenerate’.

“So, what did you do?” Dina asks.

“Started my own business,” Joel says, and Ellie knows that, but she bites her tongue. “It wasn’t easy, striking out on my own. But there’s something to be said about being the boss. You don’t have to worry about someone else shutting you down and taking your livelihood away.”

“Well, it’s not the thirties anymore, Joel,” Ellie teases, “you can’t just start up a business that easily. There’s things like _laws_ now.”

“You ever gonna outgrow that teenage snark of yours?” He comments. Ellie picks up her beer and shrugs with a smirk.

Dina kicks her shin under the table.

The conversation moves on to Tommy’s family, to Dina’s job and the potentially looming promotion. Ellie listens to her with a swell of pride. Dina has been admirably pushing through the glass ceiling and making all those obnoxious white men learn to respect her.

It hasn’t been easy, Ellie knows that. There have been frustrated tears, and angry rants shouted to the walls of their house, days when she thought Dina was going to give up and walk away from it. But she never had. No, she’d just gotten up the next day, put her fiercest power-suit on and tackled all her frustrations and anger head on with hard work.

And then, if the day had gone well, Ellie got to fully reap the benefits of her confident, power-suited partner coming home on a high.

And they were _really_ good benefits.

Now, as she listens to Dina talk about her job, she wraps her ankles around Dina’s and watches her with lovesick eyes.

If Joel notices, he doesn’t comment.

After dessert and a movie, he sends them home with leftovers and the recipe for the casserole. Dina drives them home, the radio playing softly as they drive through the quiet streets of Jackson.

A familiar synth riff starts up and Ellie feels a little jump in her chest. There’s a quiet buzz about her from the few beers she’d downed at dinner, and she can’t stop the smile that cracks across her face.

She stares at Dina until the other woman notices.

“Can I help you?” Dina asks with a little grin.

“You wanna hear something embarrassing?”

“Always.”

Ellie shakes her head and takes a deep breath. “Before, and when we first, like, got together,” she says, “I would listen to this song on repeat for like…hours. I even learned how to replicate that synthesizer.”

“Oh my _god_ ,” Dina laughs and looks over at her as she stops at a red light, “you’re such a fucking _sap_.”

“Shut up,” Ellie laughs, reaching over and shoving Dina’s shoulder. “What, you never did anything embarrassing like that? I bet you had a picture of me that you slept with under your pillow or something.”

“It was actually a pocket-sized to-scale model,” Dina replies. Ellie tosses her head back as she laughs. “I would stick pins in it whenever you pissed me off.”

Ellie gasps, feigning affront and slapping Dina’s thigh. Dina laughs and pulls through the green light, catching Ellie’s hand and pressing her lips to her knuckles.

“You’re such a dick,” Ellie says, still laughing lightly.

“But you love me.”

Ellie hums and leans across the centre console to leave a kiss on Dina’s temple. “But I love you.”

The song keeps playing as Dina turns down their street, and Ellie feels her heart fill with contentment.

_I've been waiting for a girl like you,  
To come into my life  
I've been waiting for a girl like you,  
A love that will survive_

***

“What are you doing?”

Dina’s voice startles Ellie from where she had been running gentle fingers through the loose hair at Dina’s temples.

“Uh,” Ellie stammers, “um, just like…petting you?”

“Creeper,” Dina mumbles. She yawns and stretches her arms up above her head. “What time is it?”

“Seven-ish,” Ellie answers. Dina groans and swats her hands away, turning over and pulling the comforter up around her ears.

“Go away if you’re not going to sleep,” she grumbles, and Ellie rolls her eyes.

“I was just admiring the grey hairs you’re getting,” Ellie says, pressing up against Dina’s back and brushing her lips against the shell of her ear.

“What!” Dina shoots up, her head smacking Ellie in the mouth.

“Fuck, dude,” Ellie hisses, clasping a mouth over her mouth.

“You take that back, Ellie Williams,” Dina says, grasping at the hair by her temples and trying to pull it in front of her face to have a look.

“It’s not a bad thing,” Ellie says, “it’s kind of hot!”

Dina reaches over and flicks her in the forehead. “I’m _barely_ thirty-one, I can’t have _grey fucking hairs_.”

“Okay, if I knew this was going to send you into a spiral, I would’ve just kept my mouth shut.” Ellie sighs and sits up, pulling Dina’s hands away from her hair and squeezing them in her own. “I thought you knew; you look in the mirror sometimes.”

The joke lands flat as Dina’s lips fall into a sad little frown. Ellie bites back a laugh and slips her arms around Dina’s back, drawing her in until Dina’s got her face tucked into Ellie’s neck.

“What’s next,” she feels the vibrations of Dina’s voice against her throat, “crow’s feet? Oh, god, I’m going to be arthritic by the time I’m forty, aren’t I? I knew I should have kept up with those Jane Fonda videos, but I couldn’t fit into that dumb leotard anymore.” Dina leans back and Ellie watches helplessly as she shakes her head and bites her bottom lip. “Oh, god, I’m going to get old and turn into a lump of wrinkly skin and you’re going to have to bring me my meals on a tv-tray, and -”

“Okay, that’s enough,” Ellie cuts in and claps a hand over Dina’s lips, “you sound crazy. It’s like, five greys hairs, babe. We can grab some hair dye if you want. And, the rest of it…you’re just being crazy.”

Dina takes a deep breath and nods. She pries Ellie’s hands from her lips. “You promise you’d tell me if I looked like an old woman?”

Ellie snorts. Then she realises Dina isn’t joking, and she nods, wiping the smile from her face.

“And when we’re both old and wrinkled,” Dina continues, “you’ll still think I’m hot, right?”

“Foxy, even,” Ellie says, with a serious nod.

Dina smiles at that, and she holds the comforter around her shoulders as she climbs onto Ellie’s lap. The bare skin of their thighs sticks together as she straddles her lap. Ellie hums at the warmth that settles there, a spark igniting in her belly.

Dina’s hands tuck themselves under Ellie’s shirt and travel upwards. Ellie gasps and presses into them, her own fingers digging into the dip of Dina’s hips.

“Prove it,” Dina challenges her, and Ellie doesn’t need to be told twice as Dina grinds down in her lap. The flimsy fabric of Dina’s underwear is easily pushed aside and Ellie drops her head against Dina’s clavicle as she slides through damp heat and curves her hand up.

The clock radio turns on at seven-thirty as Dina is running her tongue between Ellie’s legs, and they both pause in their desperate movements.

“I can be late,” Ellie breathes, and Dina nods, returning to her task with a devilish grin.

The song that plays on the radio is poppy and bright, and neither girl can take themselves too seriously with it playing. Ellie still finds that peak, still tumbles down the other side safely into Dina’s mouth and hands.

Later, when she’s fixing some wiring in the back of the _Donkey Kong_ machine, that same song comes on and Ellie has to pull her lips into her mouth to keep from smiling like an idiot.

_I'm walking on sunshine,  
And don’t it feel good!_

***

Ellie arranges the papers on the table in front of her. The little wooden dining table is absolutely covered in them, and they flutter slightly as the breeze from the window kicks up.

Ellie slams it shut.

“I think this is it,” she mumbles to herself. The kitchen radio plays softly in the background, the midnight DJ rambling on about the weather or whatever. Her fingers brush over the bank statements, the business plans, the hastily scrawled notes in her chicken scratch.

“Ellie, what the hell was that noise?”

Ellie cringes and turns around with a big smile pasted on. Dina is standing in the doorway to their bedroom, rubbing her eyes. The too-big shirt she wears to bed is caught up around her hips, the soft incandescent bulb in the ceiling light casting her in a gentle yellow light.

“Hey,” Ellie whispers, drawing the syllable out, “sorry, that was just me closing the window.”

Dina groans and walks over to her. Her feet slide over the linoleum in the socks she’s got on, and she tucks herself into Ellie’s shoulder.

“What’s all that?”

Ellie’s fingers twist the ends of Dina’s hair and she lays kisses to the crown of her head as she speaks. “That’s uh, my plan. For the arcade.”

“You figured it out?” Dina peers over her shoulder and cold fingers slip up the back of Ellie’s shirt.

“I think so,” Ellie says, “but there’s a few things that I need to double check. With you, actually.”

“Sure,” Dina’s lips brush across the bend of Ellie’s neck, “of course, anything you need.”

“Do you want to wait for the morning?” Ellie asks in a mumble, twisting until she catches Dina’s lips in her own. The kiss is sweet and soft, Dina’s lips warm from sleep.

“I’m up now,” she says with a shrug, coaxing a few more kisses from Ellie and then stepping back. Her hands slide around Ellie’s sides and tickle the points of her hips as they fall away. “Let me get my glasses, okay?”

They sit together at the table in a few minutes, Dina having slipped her glasses on and pulled a pair of sweatpants on. Her hands wrap around a mug of hot herbal tea, and Ellie starts explaining her plan.

At the end of it, Dina’s teeth are worrying her bottom lip. The mug of tea sits empty in her hands.

“So,” Ellie’s knee is bouncing with anxious energy, “what do you think?”

“It’s risky,” Dina sighs. She rubs at the corner of her eye under the thick rims of her glasses. “I don’t know, Ellie. That’s… _really_ risky.”

“I know,” Ellie says, and she can feel her heart sinking, “I know, it’s stupid. I just…I really want to save this place, Dina. I think I can do it. But it is, like, really expensive. I get that. And you’re my priority, and I know we’ve been thinking about how we could be buying our _own_ house soon, and…I get it. If you think it’s too risky, I won’t do it.”

“Hey,” Dina places her hand on Ellie’s forearm, “take a breath, okay?” Her fingers cover the ink of Ellie’s tattoo. “I never said you shouldn’t do it. I said it’s risky. And if this is what you really want, I think you _should_ do it.”

“Wait, really?” Ellie’s brow knits together. “Dina, you don’t have to agree to this, we’re partners -”

“Shut up,” Dina laughs, and she leans forward and silences Ellie with a kiss. Her lips taste like the camomile of her tea, and Ellie’s eyes flutter shut at their insistent press. Dina pulls back and holds Ellie’s jaw in her hands. Her thumbs trace the curve of her cheekbones. “I know what that place means to you, baby. And what it means to me. So just…do it. Or at least try. I’ve got you, okay?”

Ellie’s smile splits from ear to ear, and she surges forward to take Dina’s lips and press, and pull, and taste until they’re stumbling back to their bed, the lights left on as they fall together onto the mattress in a breathless tangle.

***

Her pen glides over the dotted line. Her signature is left behind on the page, and Ellie feels a confusing mix of pride and fear stir up in her stomach. She shakes the lawyers’ hands, she shakes Marlene’s hand, and then she’s left alone in _her_ arcade.

The arcade she just bought.

The arcade she just blew her all her savings buying.

The arcade that was about to be sold off for parts because it wasn’t making any money.

“What the _fuck_ did I just do?”

**Author's Note:**

> i missed them. so they're back! let me know if you're with me here for this little two or three part epilogue!


End file.
